Page 46 of Love, Academically

The anger was burning him inside, forcing his pulse higher and higher.

His hands balled into fists as the kettle boiled for his black coffee.

The corporate businessman in him reared its ugly head.

Sue was unprofessional, inappropriate and truly a bad manager.

He’d had run-ins with her before, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

It took a bit of force, a bit of guile, a bit of hard-nosed pressure for Sue to do the job that she was paid to do.

He’d met people like her before and he could deal with them in his sleep.

So why couldn’t Lila? It was so easy, all she had to do was talk to Sue, point out her obvious mismanagement of this situation, and all her troubles would be fixed. Rhys forced himself to breathe evenly and think.

Lila was soft-hearted and had low self-esteem, so that was probably a tough thing to do for her.

Really tough. The worst thing was that she didn’t want his help.

He could have this nipped it in the bud in ten seconds flat, but he wouldn’t, because she didn’t want him to. Even though it killed him inside.

“Hello, Rhys.” Sue bustled into the office, huffing and puffing, setting her mug next to his. “Mine’s black, two sugars.”

Fucking hell. The world could piss right off with this test of his willpower and self-restraint.

“I am having the worst day,” Sue said, leaning her portly ass against the small kitchen cabinets. She was obviously wanting some kind of response.

“Oh?” he said, his voice clipped.

“I’ve just had to tell Lila to buck her ideas up and not let disappointment affect her work. It’s so tough getting people who are resilient, you know?”

Resilient. Buck her ideas up. Disappointment.

Rhys made a non-committal noise at the back of his throat, because if he said words, he would say much more than Lila wanted him to. How fucking unprofessional of Sue to be gossiping about Lila’s work which, he might add, was pretty damn good.

“I mean, she’s good. She is. But she couldn’t possibly keep everything running and do a Master’s course as well and it’s not like I have time to do her job as well as my own.”

“Isn’t personal development part of the University’s guidelines?”

“Yeah, but not at the expense of a well-running department. Come on, Rhys, she wants to do a Linguistics Master’s? Lila Cartwright couldn’t linguistic her way out of a paper bag.” Sue gave a very not attractive snort laugh.

What did that sentence even mean? Either way, Rhys got the derogatory drift. The vein in his temple pulsed and his jaw ached from clenching it.

Nope, no. Cannot do.

He could not stand there and listen to this dreary old woman who sat on her arse all day, having Lila do her own job and Sue’s job so she would look good, crow about how she was stifling someone’s dream, all because she knew full well she wouldn’t be able to cope without Lila.

That’s what he heard when Sue opened her stupid, insipid, manipulative mouth.

“Sue.” His voice was cold and quiet, a trick he had learned from his father.

Don’t shout, boy. Don’t let your emotions get the better of you.

Rhys folded his arms across his chest and pinned her with his eyes. He waited just long enough for Sue to shift on her feet, looking slightly uncomfortable.

“Firstly, do you feel it appropriate to discuss a colleague’s professional development, and your opinion on the same? And to do so in such a public setting?”

“Uh, well, it’s just you and me, Rhys.”

“Yes it is, and I find it highly inappropriate.”

Sue blanched. Her shoulders stiffened.

“Secondly, your inability to grasp why someone would want to take a course to further their career, to possibly branch out into something new, demonstrates your extreme lack of motivation and ambition. Frankly, it’s embarrassing the scorn you show for anyone who does demonstrate such qualities.”

Fuck, this felt amazing.

“Thirdly, your vindictive and soulless managerial skills have ensured that Miss Cartwright can never progress, because you will constantly keep her under your thumb doing both her work and yours, when she is capable of so much more than you ever will be.”

Sue spluttered, her face an interesting puce colour.

“However, now that you have some apprehension of these defects in both your personal awareness and professional skill level, I feel sure that you will discuss the matter of the late submission of the application with the appropriate Admissions Officer and secure an extension to allow Miss Cartwright’s application to be considered. ”

“How did you, how do you—”

Rhys cut her off with a wave of his hand. This was not her show.

“If that is not the case, then I’m sure that the Vice Chairman and the Head of HR, both of whom I am well acquainted with, will be very interested to hear about the vicious and spiteful way in which you manage your hardworking staff members.”

Sue looked like her brain was ready to explode. He would lay a bet that in all her years, no one had ever spoken to her like that. Well, she fucking deserved it.

It wasn’t how you managed people – fuck, it wasn’t even how you treated people, and then she had the gall to come in and gloat about it in a public environment to someone who had literally nothing to do with the situation. Nope. Not today, Satan.

Sue said nothing. Her mouth opened and closed like a schoolchild caught in a lie. Rhys waited. Emotions flew across her face and there was no way he cared enough to work out what they were. He was in the right here and Sue was definitely slap-bang in the middle of ‘wrong’.

“Uh, well, I uh…”

Sue finally gave up and threw her hands in the air before storming out of the room, hissing profanities. If he was petty and petulant (which he was not), then he would have asked her to repeat herself and then reported her to HR for the use of foul language in the workplace.

And then he would have taken her coffee to her, white no sugar.

What a twat.

Lila

There had been so many RSVPs to the meet and greet.

It was amazing that people wanted to come.

Well, perhaps it was the promise of a glass or two of dodgy sangria, some plain tortillas and the garlickiest guacamole she could make.

Students, lecturers, admin staff; lots of people would be stopping by, so much so she’d had to move it to one of the bigger seminar rooms. Even people from outside the department had got wind of it and wanted to come. Excellent.

She’d persuaded Rhys to come and help set up (i.e.

, told him he had to) and prepared tinny mariachi music to play from her little portable speaker.

Bunting had been found in the stationery cupboard and Rhys’s pert little bum was in particularly good form as he stood on a chair to pin it across the wall.

“Dan’s coming,” Rhys said over his shoulder as he stretched to stick the last plastic triangle to the corner. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, course it is.” She liked Dan and it was good to form relationships with other departments. Not to mention the fact that he was Rhys’s best (only?) friend, and her best friend’s boyfriend. It would be good to get to know him better. “The more the merrier.”

Rhys stepped down and looked like he had something else to say, probably something about telling Dan about their ‘status’, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want people to know, it was just that she didn’t want the fuss, the exclamation, the judgment behind the eyes that someone like Rhys would want a mess of a person like her.

It was just better to let people notice organically. Easier.

She thought she’d been happy before, but what she really wanted was someone to share her life with, someone who would support her and respect her.

Finding that in the most unlikely of places (a very stroppy, highly strung academic) just made her grin.

She hadn’t even been looking. The swearing off all men tactic had gone spectacularly badly in the best way.

Rhys stepped down from the chair narrowed his eyes at her.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Hmm, just… things,” she said, resting her hands on his chest. “I’m happy.”

Happiness flashed across Rhys’s eyes and a soft smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“Good,” he said. “I am too.”

Rhys was happy with her, no changes needed. Warmth spread through her chest.

“Oh, uh sorry, Miss Cartwright.” DeVon cleared his throat behind them. “Has it started yet?”

“DeVon,” she said, stepping away from Rhys, whose hand lingered on her waist. “Thanks for coming. Help yourself to a drink, some nachos.”

“Okay,” he said, heading for the lukewarm sangria. “The others will be here soon.”

The absolute worst outcome for a party was if no one actually turned up. Or one person came and stood there awkwardly until they could feasibly leave the room.

“Good,” she said.

Forty minutes later, the room was full of plastic cup-holding students and lecturers, and a couple were already a bit worse for wear.

Someone had produced some face-paint from somewhere, and Lila was busy drawing rainbow moustaches and Taylor Swift hearts on people, which were getting progressively wonkier after two glasses of what had turned out to be quite strong sangria (good job Rhys had driven that morning). Dan was her current victim.

“Let me take a picture for Jasmeet.”

Lila pulled out her phone and Dan grinned at her.

“I look sexy, don’t I?” he asked with a wink.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, laughing. The glitter pink neon heart stood out nice and bright around his eye.

“Hey, I hope you’re not flirting with my girl,” Rhys said, slinging his arm over her shoulder.

See! They didn’t have to put an announcement in the paper.

Organic. No big deal. But the flutter in her stomach as the words my girl rolled around her head made her hot and flushed.

And, good Lord, that little bit of possessiveness was hot.

Lila swallowed hard before saying, “Your turn now, Rhys.”